have you ever clicked on the "worship naked" button? how could you not... 95% of y'all are as horny as i am. shit man, all it took for me to become a member was a few of his pictures and a quick glance at his blogroll. well, that's not entirely true.
it was more like a "i wish i could be this guy" type thing... not because the women flock to him, not because of his lifestyle... but because of his outlook. he thinks. he puts so much thought into his posts. he inspires. he educates. and most importantly... he loves.
so, i give you Garrison Steelle of "The Church of Steelle"...
i don't know if you remember or not, but there is a sequence of events that lead me to you, but mainly it was through "easykimmie, a girl in transition" who now writes under "mercurial girl". basically, i followed you from one blog to another for an entire day. by 10pm that nite, you were at my blog with the following comment "You knew I would
be by, didn't you..."
the above is one of the many reasons why i call you the "perfect blogger". you keep up with more blogs than i ever could, you always leave the right type of comment, especially when someone needs support.
how many blogs do you read? and how on earth do you come up with those perfect comments?
LOL. I remember thinking, “Is this guy stalking me or what?” I was beginning to become concerned until I read through your blog, which confirmed your level of coolness. ;)
I subscribe to 118 blogs using Bloglines. Those are the blogs to which I comment most often because I know when they’ve updated. There are about 15 or so “church members” who have blogs with either no RSS feed or some other funky reason that prevents me from subscribing. It is much more difficult for me to get by those simply because my memory is pretty well shot.
As for commenting, I try really hard to get a feel for the writer’s situation, to empathize where possible and sympathize elsewhere. I strongly believe that if it is within my power to make someone’s day better, I have a responsibility to do so. Since I’m such a comment whore myself, I try to leave the type comments I most enjoy getting in return.
the church really isn't a church, is it? it's a play on words... pun definitely intended. i'm proud to say that i am member number 26, sandwiched in between vampyregirl and mamacita. as far as i can tell, i was only your 2nd male member.
do you think it's funny that i just said that i am your "2nd male member"?
No, it's nothing CLOSE to being a church in the traditional sense, but in the more broad definition of the word, that is apart from specific Christian references, the word, derived from the Greek, is an extended derivative of the word "ecclesia" which is quite simply a spiritual congregation. In THAT sense of the word, we are when we want to be. That we focus our spirituality in regard to sexual matters offends some, but is still an accurate use of the word.
Hmmmmm ... Your my second male member and you don't fit in my pants. ;)
you know as your second male member, i would at least like to think of myself as a deacon. of course, there are some of your members much more deserving of such a title.
going back to the spiritual aspect of your blog... there are certain topics which you have taken to heart. sexual freedom, sex education for children, and sex life improvement being just a few. do you feel this is your "calling"? would your spirit be troubled if you weren't able to advocate and educate?
You know, we've not done the whole deacon/elder/bishop thing. Perhaps we should. ;)
I'm going to steer clear of the term "calling" because the inference there is that one's destiny is pre-ordained and I just don't buy into that philosophy. Are sexual issues a driving passion for me? Absolutely. Would my spirit be troubled if I lost my "voice?" Without question. Few people work with more young women, ages 18-26, than I do. The greater majority of horrors I've witnessed in these young girls' lives has been because either they weren't given basic facts about sex or because their home environment was so overwhelmingly oppressive that they rebelled with the most dangerous forms of sexual activity.
When an 18-yr-old girl approaches you about helping her get into porn, not because she likes sex but because it's the only "skill" she has with which to feed two small babies, how can your heart not break? She had believed all the wrong people (church and school primarily), had tried to be a "good" girl, but in the end found herself abandoned by those who claimed to be "right". Abused, used, and confused, she was turning to sex for all the wrong reasons. I had that conversation for the first time in 1988 and it has repeated itself multiple times a year every year ever since.
Perhaps I'll stop screaming when I stop having those conversations.
you are a photographer... and while your trained eye can not only catch the leading lines of an illuminated building at nite, you can also see even the smallest of imperfections of a woman's body.
you've talked about how having the right type of model effects your work, yet you are still able to stay grounded in reality without being superficial... how do you balance the two?
By understanding the difference between beauty and marketability. Beauty is everlasting, something that grows up from inside a person and, sometimes, even makes itself physically manifest. There are millions of beautiful people who will never be models, though. Why? Because they are not marketable. When a model steps in front of my camera for professional reasons, the purpose becomes one of selling and the model becomes the object. What is marketable is not something I can control. I have absolutely no say in the matter and, a very difficult but important lesson to learn was that my opinion really doesn't matter to anyone who matters. Marketability is fleeting; very much a "here today, gone tomorrow" quality. What defines marketability is something manufactured on Madison Avenue; it's not real.
To that end, my professional work requires that I create marketable images, mindful of every detail and possible imperfection. We brush out lines and freckles and stretchmarks and scars, enhance eye color, skin tone, and sometimes even do a little body sculpting. However, when I step away from the professional world, I'm no longer concerned about what's marketable and much more interested in beauty.
Make sense?
of course you make sense... you always make sense. which is why i lean on you so heavily... it's why i've incorporated your views on sexuality with my own. it's why i've realized i have an active role in the sexual education of my three children. i'm proud to say that i'm a member of your congregation.
one last question before you leave...
you were an original blogger... i can remember you saying that you gave Blogger a donation back in the day so they could improve their servers. you have seen the blogging evolution from the beginning, but where do we go from here? what's next for us bloggers?
Asking me to delve into a bit of futurism, huh? ;) I'm not sure everyone is going to like the picture.
One of the big successes of blogging is that is has finally allowed anyone who wants one to have their own web site. You don't HAVE to know a lick of HTML. You don't HAVE to rent space on a server somewhere. You don't HAVE to have a domain name or understand URLs and IP addresses. FTP? No longer a concern. To that end, blogging has allowed the great promise of the Internet to be realized.
However, I see some strong trends developing.
One is the commercialization of blogging. One of the most obvious examples is Whitney Matheson's entertainment blog on USA Today online. Here's a person who assembles very basic entertainment information five days a week and gets paid for it. Is her blog any better than any of the other entertainment blogs out there? No, not really. Whitney just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The point is, however, that there is a commercial value to those blogs with large audiences and I fully expect there to soon be a strong delineation between "professional" and "amateur" blogs, possibly even to the point that some blogs may adopt a pay-per-view subscription model.
The second is more of a merger between blogs, multimedia content, and podcasting. Services such as "Hello" and "Flickr" are driving this trend, making it possible for average users with no real technical knowledge to incorporate pictures into their blogs. I won't be the least bit surprised when someone creates a similar tool for video (Blogger already has one for simple, short audio). As blogs become more media rich, "viewers" are going to want to know when a blog is updated and be able to access that blog from multiple source points, creating a natural tie-in for podcasting. There are still some technical challenges to that last step, but I see no reason to doubt those will be overcome probably within the next year.
The third is the creation of formal blog "associations." To some degree, that's what we've been up to this point. Only within the past month have I started getting regular membership requests from people who don't have blogs of their own. The blogging community is more than a little incestuous when it comes to links and references and I think that ultimately may result in certain blog identifications, affiliations, or something within that realm. We are just too hung up on categorization for that to not happen.
Finally, I think there is a real possibility for blogs to create political chaos on an international level. We saw in the last U.S. Presidential election how that bloggers not only from the U.S. but from other countries around the world did not hesitate to vocalize their support for one candidate and spew hatred toward the other. That impact created a small but measurable ripple in the election results. Now, assume that someone such as Matt Drudge (not to pick on anyone, but he's a recognizable source) releases an article claiming that Saudi Arabia is cutting off its oil pipelines, essentially forcing an oil embargo. Thirty years ago, the White House was able to prevent total anarchy by controlling the information released to the public. Blogs essentially remove that control. Rumors start flying, accusations become rampant and every oil dependent country in the world would erupt. What's truly frightening is that I see no real way to control such a disaster. The power of blogging is much strong than I think most of us realize.
This has been fun. Thanks for inviting me. Now, if you could talk to Nay about letting me take the Mini for a spin ... ;)
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Garrison writes daily at The Church of Steelle, which is found at http://www.churchofsteelle.com/blog1/index.html . It's so much more than a blog... It's a community. Go by and say "Hi..."
